KEY POINTS:
It's a nightmare scenario for any employee. Accused of putting their hand in the till, or stealing the company's product, they are given a choice: resign or be sacked. To make matters worse, they then end up on a blacklist of "dishonest" employees that is accessible to other
employers, and all of a sudden their future prospects look very bleak.
In the UK, this scenario is an issue for many employees. The National Staff Dismissal Register has been established by an organisation called Action Against Business Crime, and is an online database of workers accused of dishonesty, regardless of whether they have been convicted of any crime.
According to the website of Hicom , the company that developed the database, it holds details of staff who have been dismissed or left their employer while under suspicion of various dishonest acts, including theft and fraud. However, it also catches people accused of merely "causing a loss to the company or another party", or causing damage to company property.
It allows employers to search by name, address, date of birth, tax number, and previous employer. Records on individuals - accessible online via an encrypted password system - will be kept for a five-year period and can include photos.
The benefits to employers are obvious: candidates who are on the Register, and therefore may present a risk to them if employed, can be rejected. This would in theory reduce losses through employee theft, and also act as a deterrent to other staff.
However, there are equally obvious concerns about the Register. It doesn't just capture people convicted of a dishonesty-related offence, or even employees whose dismissals have been deemed to be fair by the UK Employment Tribunal (the equivalent of our Employment Relations Authority). The employee merely has to be under suspicion, whether reasonable or not.
Could this come to New Zealand? Quite possibly. There is after all a credit rating system that holds information about people, and rates the suitability of those applying for loans.
It would arguably fall foul of our Privacy Act, but then the UK has similar privacy legislation and that didn't stop the register being established.
The problem with this sort of thing is that it's open to all kinds of abuses. Aside from the problems mentioned above, an employee might be listed by an ex-employer who bears them a grudge for reasons entirely unrelated to their honesty, or the lack thereof. And while they have a right under the Privacy Act to ask for inaccurate personal information to be corrected, they might not even be aware they are on such a register. It may take them months or years to find out the real reason they are missing out on the jobs they are going for.
This has caused something of a furore in the UK. This article from the BBC suggests that unions, individuals and civil rights groups oppose the initiative. Their concerns appear to be well-founded, and you have to hope that nothing like this will happen here.
Greg Cain
Greg Cain is an employment lawyer at Minter Ellison Rudd Watts.
photo: Graeme Sedal